Gary Bauer

Gary Bauer is the founder and President of American Values, a conservative advocacy organization, and has been among the most consistent evangelical Christian voices for Israel in American political life since the Reagan administration. Born May 4, 1946, in Covington, Kentucky, Bauer graduated from Georgetown College and received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. He served as domestic policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1987, then as Under Secretary of Education. He subsequently led the Family Research Council for a decade before founding American Values and running briefly for president in the 2000 Republican primary.

Bauer's pro-Israel advocacy is grounded in the same evangelical Protestant theological framework that undergirds CUFI's constituency, but he has brought it into the policy and political organizational arena rather than the strictly church-based one. He appears regularly at pro-Israel forums alongside Jewish organizational leaders, addresses Republican conventions and conservative policy gatherings on the Israel-Iran relationship, and has been a consistent voice opposing any Republican or conservative movement toward the isolationist or paleoconservative positions that would deprioritize Israel. His column and radio commentary reach evangelical Christian audiences that overlap with but are distinct from Hagee's megachurch network.

His willingness to push back against conservative trends that he views as insufficiently pro-Israel — including strands of conservative opinion that question American military commitments in the Middle East — makes him a useful countervoice within the Republican and conservative coalition. At Rank 68, Bauer represents the evangelical policy intellectual: not the pastor who mobilizes his congregation, but the policy veteran who works the conservative movement's institutional infrastructure to maintain Israel as a non-negotiable Republican commitment.